North Korea, Justin Bieber and the perils / pitfalls of UGC

Tweetmeme report that this contest was tweeted about in excess of 12,000 times and (at the time of writing) there are 99,142 Likes on Facebook. As a result a huge amount of votes were cast in the Justin Bieber poll, and on closing yesterday the final results for the top 10 countries were:

So a landmark win for the North Koreans and a groundbreaking concert performance coming up? Er, no. North Korea is one of the least connected countries in the world and it is doubtful that 659,141 North Koreans would have been permitted to go online to vote in a Justin Bieber concert poll.

The North Korea win was a result of the poll being hijacked by messageboard 4Chan who (are reported to have) encouraged members and friends / followers to vote for North Korea, 'corrupting' the results of web democracy in the same way that they manipulated the voting in the Time Top 100 most influential people poll in 2009.

The Justin Bieber world tour vote shows how viral attention can drive unpredictable results. The advance planning for any kind of UGC contest should therefore include a discussion about how much control to maintain. Too little and you end up having to tour North Korea or producing a Penguin Snow Boot, too much and there is no 'fun' to be had for internet users and the potential for viral spread is limited.

There is wisdom in crowds, but there can also be a cheeky subversiveness too - and both eventualities need to be prepared for!

Privacy policy

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyse traffic. Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google, together with performance and security metrics, to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics and to detect and address abuse.